Comprehensive and full-featured data management systems may be prohibitively expensive, require an operator with specialized expertise, and consume substantial processing and data storage resources. However, full-featured data management systems can also offer substantial benefits to an organization, including, top-down, policy-driven data management; data replication and protection; cloud storage integration; storage resource management, analysis, optimization, and reporting; data archiving, deduplication, compression and encryption; electronic discovery (E-discovery), privacy violation, retention life cycle, and compliance management; backup and recovery; content indexing; data classification; enterprise and collaborative data mining and search; migration from legacy data storage solutions; virtual server protection; disaster recovery; access control and security; and many others.
One example of a data management system that provides such features is the Simpana storage management system by CommVault Systems of Oceanport, N.J. The Simpana system leverages a modular storage management architecture that may include, among other things, storage manager components, client or data agent components, and media agent components as further described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,246,207, filed Apr. 5, 2004, entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DYNAMICALLY PERFORMING STORAGE OPERATIONS IN A COMPUTER NETWORK. The Simpana system also may be hierarchically configured into backup cells to store and retrieve backup copies of electronic data as further described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,395,282, filed Jul. 15, 1999, entitled HIERARCHICAL BACKUP AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM.
To avoid the overhead of a comprehensive data management system, an organization may initially choose to forego these advantages and instead deploy limited-feature data management software applications that provide piecemeal feature coverage. For example, an organization may choose to deploy a first limited-feature backup application that performs data backups of a limited number of client computers as well as a second limited-feature archive application that archives data. However, as an organization's data management needs grow and diversify, the organization may struggle to make a smooth transition from using a piecemeal patchwork of limited-feature software applications to using a comprehensive and full-featured data management system that provides an overarching data management framework. For example, a comprehensive and full-featured data management system may be unable to integrate the data and/or metadata previously generated by each limited-feature application used by the organization.
As a first specific example, an organization may initially use a limited-feature module to manage and provision virtual machines (VM), but later wish to receive additional features related to the management of virtual machines. In general, virtualization refers to the simultaneous hosting of one or more operating systems on a physical computer. Such virtual operating systems and their associated virtual resources are called virtual machines. Virtualization software sits between the virtual machines and the hardware of the physical computer. One example of virtualization software is ESX Server, by VMware, Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. Other examples include Microsoft Virtual Server and Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V, both by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., and Sun xVM by Oracle America Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif.
Virtualization software provides to each virtual operating system virtual resources, such as a virtual processor, virtual memory, a virtual network device, and a virtual disk. Each virtual machine has one or more virtual disks. Virtualization software typically stores the data of virtual disks in files on the file system of the physical computer, called virtual machine disk files (in the case of VMware virtual servers) or virtual hard disk image files (in the case of Microsoft virtual servers). For example, VMware's ESX Server provides the Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) for the storage of virtual machine disk files. A virtual machine reads data from and writes data to its virtual disk much the same way that an actual physical machine reads data from and writes data to an actual disk.
One advantage of virtualization is that relative to physical machines, virtual machines can be easily created. For example, organizations often provide web-based or other interfaces to virtualization software that allow users to easily create virtual machines. Often-times, however, it takes an extended period of time for a system to construct a virtual machine after it has been instructed to do so by a user. Additionally, existing virtual machines, even unused ones, consume resources (e.g., memory, storage space, processor cycles) of the physical computer on which the virtualization software operates. In certain cases, the resources of the physical computer may be fully or nearly fully utilized by the virtual machines that the physical computer hosts. In such cases, users may be unable to create new virtual machines until the physical computer becomes less utilized, which can occur if virtual machines are shut down or deleted.
As other examples, an organization may initially use a limited-feature module to (a) provide private search capabilities, (b) perform backups and other secondary storage operations for a limited number of client computers, (c) create content stores, or (d) perform other data management operations. However, the organization may later wish to receive additional, value-added features related to these tasks.
The need exists for systems and methods that overcome the above problems, as well as systems and methods that provide additional benefits. Overall, the examples herein of some prior or related systems and methods and their associated limitations are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of existing or prior systems and methods will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon reading the following Detailed Description.